


think i'm addicted to your light

by RootsCanary



Category: Grey's Anatomy, Station 19 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24001309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RootsCanary/pseuds/RootsCanary
Summary: Some angst, some fluff, lots of Maya and Carina.
Relationships: Maya Bishop/Carina DeLuca
Comments: 10
Kudos: 149





	1. meet the family

**Author's Note:**

> Hey hey, hope you enjoy, hit me up at RootsCanary on Twitter if you have any prompts you want written and I'll try my best to make them work. This prompt was about either of them meeting eachother's friends. Feedback of all sorts is always appreciated :)  
> (I know this one is pretty trashy and doesn't get their voices right, I promise, the next chapter is better.)

Maya knew what Carina's touch felt like by now. It started soft and slow and left a tingle in every inch of her skin. She didn't have to turn around when she felt hands reaching for her waist as she was finishing her patient's report for the hospital. She put the clipboard aside and leant into Carina. 

Before her, it had usually taken Maya much longer to feel comfortable around others. She didn't trust easily and most people struggled to get through to her. She knew, Carina did too sometimes. But still, everything seemed easier with her. Her embrace had felt like home in no time. 

Maya closed her eyes at the familiar sensation as Carina pressed a light kiss against her neck.  
"It's good to see you." she whispered, her lips now brushing Maya's ear.  
Maya inhaled.  
"Good to see you too."

She turned around and took a step back, their fingers now entangled. Touching Carina came so easily to her, it was like they naturally gravitated towards eachother. In the beginning, Carina was the one who was mostly touching her. Not in a sexual way, just hands brushing and being held, resting on her legs, her arms and cheeks, almost as if to reassure herself that Maya was still there. By now, it had become a habit between them. They aimed for some professional distance at work though. Or tried to. Well, at least Maya did. 

"Is your patient alright?“ Carina asked.  
Maya nodded.  
"It were light injuries, he should be out of the hospital in no time."  
She picked up the clipboard.  
"Means that I should get going too though. As much as I would love to stay, that-" she signed the form "was all the hospital needed."  
"Are you done?"  
Andy walked around the corner. She stopped for a second when Maya didn't immediately follow. She looked at Maya, their hands, at Carina and back at Maya. A wide grin spread on her face.  
She reached out a hand to Carina.  
"Hi. I'm Andy, Maya's best friend."  
Carina let go of Maya's hand and shook Andy's.  
"Dr. Carina DeLuca. I'm... uh..."  
Maya pitched in.  
"Actually, Andy is right, we should get going probably-"  
Andy shook her head.  
"No, it's fine, I think we've got a few more minutes, I can wait for you in the aid car. I'll get that." she said and grabbed the clipboard from Maya.

"So... do you want to talk about that, or...?“ Carina asked.  
Maya hesitated for a moment.  
"Do you?“ she asked.  
"I do but you were very clear last time that you don't need a girlfriend."  
Maya tensed up at the sound of Carina's voice. She wished, she could take that back. Many things, actually. But that sentence specifically. She was terrified to mess this up. Carina meant so much to her already and it had only been a few months. She didn't want to push her away.  
"I'm sorry. I really am, I wish I could take that back. Because honestly, I might not need a girlfriend but I want you. I want you to be in my life however you'd like to be but... preferably as my girlfriend? If, if you want that too obviously."  
The expression on Carina's face softened at Maya's nervous rambling. She smiled.  
"I'd like that."  
Maya leant in and planted a short kiss on her cheek. Way shorter than she would've liked. And they should probably talk some more as well. But they would have time for that later.  
"I'll see you tonight then." she said and walked back to the aid car. Neither of them would be able to shake off their smile for the rest of the day. When she climbed into the passenger seat, Andy raised an eyebrow.  
"So... that's that 'friend' you called during the snowstorm? "  
"Girlfriend." Maya corrected her.


	2. it wasn't supposed to go like this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of angst this time (trigger warning for emotional abuse and mentions of depression, self harm and suicide). Also kinda feel like I should point out that this is what I think Carina's past and thought process could look like but does not at all represent how I feel. Happy reading nevertheless.

Carina's fingers hovered over her phone screen. It had been a while since she had last called her. This year, things had gone well. Okay, maybe "well" was an overstatement. But she wasn't as easy to break anymore. She was equipped to handle her little brother and his struggles without sacrificing the work that she had put in and even spending three months with her dad had been something along the lines of alright. Just a few months ago, she thought that she finally had things under control.  
Until Maya came along.

Everything had been so perfect in the beginning. Too perfect. Sure, perfect was an overstatement again. But Maya made Carina feel things that she hadn't in a long time, maybe ever before. Carina felt so drawn to her. To the way she touched her and looked at her, to the way her body trembled under Carina's fingers, the range of her voice which always changed depending on the situation and how she spoke about the people she admired. To the way her hair always fell perfectly and was so soft, her big blue eyes and the way she smiled when they were alone. She felt like she could spend an eternity with Maya and when they weren't together, Carina’s mind kept wandering off to her. Maya listened when she needed to vent about Andrew and when Maya didn't quite know what to say, their conversations were still effortless. The sex was amazing. She tried breaking some habits so they could spend more time with each other. She was so strong, driven and absolutely brilliant. And still, she could be so soft and silent.  
In the beginning, Carina felt so safe and at ease around Maya. She had craved that for a long time. She was usually the one who took on a more protective role in a relationship. But while not in the same way, Maya had matched her in that and made Carina feel so cared for. Being around her felt so good, it was almost addictive. So Carina fell hard and fast.

She knew, she should've read the warning signs earlier. The snapping, the panic attack, how Maya would change the topic when Carina brought up her parents. And the fact that she didn't mind when Maya started talking about something else because it meant that she never got around to speaking about her own medical history.  
Carina had been lying when she told Maya that she wasn't in the habit of fixing broken people. It might not be as bad as it used to be but still - she seemed to attract those people. That's what she knew best, after all she had been fixing people since she was ten years old.  
It had started with her dad and her parents' relationship and as she grew older, she was always the one people turned to when they were struggling.  
Taking care of her dad didn't feel good. It was a lot of raised voices, nights spent crying in her bedroom and embarrassment when he erupted in public and left it to her to pick up the pieces. She started a bunch of different hobbies, just to make sure that she had enough reasons to stay away from home. But still, she would check in with him almost every night. She learned how to ask the right questions to figure out if he was on the verge of doing something reckless and how to stop him from doing so, even if it involved stealing data or supplies or secretly canceling meetings from his computer. And she always knew how he was feeling. It didn't take her long to learn how to read the atmosphere when she came home, all before entering his study.  
She knew it by how messy the kitchen was, by the amount of coffee that was left in the package, by chairs that looked like they had been shoved aside in anger, by the music playing or lack thereof and by the topics in the medical magazines that were scattered across the living room table. She memorized his deadlines and made sure to avoid being home as much as possible shortly before. She knew when he had his riskiest surgeries and was careful not to mention the hospital afterwards. She learned how to walk on the eggshells all around her.  
Caring for her friends however, made her feel better. It hurt to see them in pain but she cherished their trust. She cherished the hesitant smiles on their faces when she told them how wonderful they were. She held two of her friends' hands while they were talking to their parents about therapy and if she could, she would've continued hugging them forever afterwards. She wanted to be a source of love and light for others and caring for her friends made her feel like that. And she saw a certain beauty in the pain. In their will to live despite their struggles and in the way that both, light and darkness existed within them. Most of her friends were queer so these issues weren't rare. Internalized homo- or transphobia, fights in their family or even physical abuse was something most of them had dealt with one way or the other. On most days, spending time with them was exhilarating and beautiful. She felt so free around them and some of her most joyful memories still take her back to that time. But they were also connected by their trauma. They understood eachother in ways that others couldn't. 

Carina started reading psychology books she took from her dad's study to understand the patterns in her friend circle. So she began to stick to them when they tried pushing her away and learned how to read warning signs for depression and how to ask the right questions when she was worried about them. She learned how to understand their reactions and stayed calm when they would lash out. She did save one or two of them from getting too close to the edge. Especially in their last months of school, a lot of them made it a point to properly thank her.  
But still - their harsh words hurt when they were angry. Worrying about them kept her up at night. She almost failed her classes several times over lost sleep and a lack of time to study. Sometimes she called every few hours or stayed up all night talking on the phone when she was worried about someone hurting themselves, especially when she felt like she was responsible for bringing up repressed issues. She dated one of the girls four months longer than she wanted to because she didn't feel like she was mentally stable enough to handle a break up.  
And yet, Carina didn't notice her own issues until she was in college. Her closest friend pointed it out to her after she continued to empathize with an ex after a rough break up and Carina avoided her for the following two months. She denied it, told herself that she was just being a good person, that she wanted to leave the world a better place than it was now and that understanding the reactions people had to her simply sobered up her own emotions, not that she ignored them for the sake of others. But she still couldn't stop thinking about it and after a tearful conversation with her friend, she eventually started therapy. And things started getting better. It was hard but by the time she came to the US, Carina was doing well and just returned for a few sessions to make sure that helping her brother wouldn't hurt her too much. She knew that it would but she couldn't just sit by and watch him go down that road all on his own. She needed to be in his corner for her own sake as much as for his.

So she was careful. She kept her distance when she felt like she had to, she made sure that she didn't try to become his therapist and that he wasn't the only person in his life nor the only thing on her mind. She had hobbies, made friends and finally found someone who supported and funded her research in Dr. Bailey. And she loved working at the hospital. The working conditions were great, she finally had colleagues that could really challenge her, got to work with some of the brightest minds in the country and the interns she was working with were promising and enjoyed learning from her as much as she enjoyed teaching them. Now, she was even considered as the new head of her department while the current one was preparing for maternity leave.  
She made sure to be careful around Andrew but she didn't expect anyone else to get to her. Not like that at least.  
She wasn't careful around Maya. She knows that she should’ve been. Maya even told her that she was broken, respected that she wanted to walk away. But Carina didn’t want to be guarded around Maya. She wanted to trust her heart, trust what they had. Because despite everything - what they had was special. So Carina didn’t hold back. She found excuses for Maya every time and continued to grow closer to her without taking much care of herself. She should’ve known better.  
Hearing Maya say that she had slept with Jack and the way her voice was cold like she didn't care at all, felt like someone had sucked all the air out of her lungs. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't cry, she couldn't move. It was paralyzing. She could just feel her heart pound in her chest, stomach turned as tears welled up in her eyes. She didn't know whether she spent barely more than a minute or half an hour sitting on that small bench in Maya's flat. At one point, she just gathered enough strength to get up and quickly collect the belongings that weren't in Maya's bedroom and fled the apartment. Somehow, she managed to keep it together on her way home but once she closed the door, Carina collapsed. She spent the entire night crying. It felt like her heart was going to jump out of her chest. She almost hoped it would, at least it couldn't hurt anymore then.  
She called in sick the next day. There was no way that she was able to talk about babies with happy couples and compliment new parents on their beautiful children without having it tear her apart. So she spent most of the day in bed, sometimes just staring at the ceiling, sometimes sobbing. All she could think about was Maya and the resentment in those big, blue eyes that she just wanted to drown in.

She tried reading and watching TV but she couldn't focus, it never took more than a few seconds for her mind to drift back to Maya. The worst part was that she began to understand.  
She had gotten too close to the truth and wouldn't leave so Maya did the one thing that would force her to. Carina began feeling guilty. Rationally, she knew that Maya was the one she should be mad at but she couldn't bring herself to do so. Instead she scolded herself for not giving Maya the space she had asked for and for pushing her too far, too early. She felt like it was her fault. She had a shot at true love and ruined it because she wanted too much, too early. Again, tears blurred her view.  
At the end of the day, exhausted, she got out of bed, put on new sheets and ordered some pasta from her favorite restaurant close by. She had planned on taking Maya there soon. It was one of the very few places in Seattle that served actual Italian food and she wanted Maya to get to know her culture. All the plans, they had made dawned on her again. And a part of her was hoping for it to work out somehow, for them to be able to realise these plans a bit later. She still didn't want to lose Maya. She couldn't even hate her.  
That night, Carina got at least a few hours of sleep. 

On the next day, putting on make up and her hair in a pony tail felt like putting on war paint. It helped. She smiled at her patients, told the new moms how beautiful their babies were and calmed down a dad who was worried that he wasn't going to be a good father. Having something to do and being able to focus on the medical issues kept her from breaking down. She almost thought nobody had noticed until Amelia caught up with her in the hallway at the end of the day.  
"Hey, not that you’re usually not perfect but it's, uh, a little much today. What's up?"  
Carina was grateful that somebody asked. Amelia had become a good friend in the past months and when she saw the tears in her eyes, she immediately took her to the jungle room. They talked for hours. About everything. Or well, Carina mostly did. Amelia was a good listener and allowed her to find her own answers. She didn't judge and knew, she didn't have to repeat what her therapist had told her so she just allowed Carina to ramble and cry and held her hand when she needed it.

It had been a few days since then. Carina was still struggling but she was beginning to feel like she could at least breathe again. She knew, however that defending Maya wasn’t helping her. She was getting worse again. So Amelia had suggested that she should call her therapist. That was how Carina ended up here.  
She had been staring at her phone for twenty minutes now. Making that call felt like ruling out any possibility of her and Maya getting back together. It at least made it very unlikely. She wasn't sure whether she was ready to bury that idea of her future yet. Her phone vibrated shortly and a message from Amelia appeared.  
"Do it."  
Carina took a deep breath. She knew that waiting would just mean that she would have more work to do. And she would have to wait for an appointment anyways.  
So she called.


End file.
